


Take You Out

by orphan_account



Series: oracles are NOT to be trusted [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: ""soulmates"" au kind of not really, F/M, Gen, Teenlock, a light and silly thing, magic school au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 08:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14132016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There’s that tumblr imagine OTP prompt or something floating around where it’s like Char A is destined to take out Char B, in a hero-villain-fight-to-the-death sort of way, except Char A takes it real literally and brings flowers takes Char B out on a date, and Char B, lord of evil, is like ????/BLUSH, etc.This is that thing.Molly is Char A, and Jim is Char B





	Take You Out

 

Molly Hooper is the last of her friends to enter the cave.

 

"This is it," she thinks. "This is where my fate will be sealed."

 

She's not wrong. At age 10, each Academy student is meant to make this journey up the mountains to speak to the Oracle and obtain their Quest, their, essentially, life mission.

 

Sherlock and John are waiting outside for her. John had gone first after the three of them bickered too long about the societal merits of Quests, an attempt to cover their nervousness.

 

"I'm meant to record history as it happened, not as those in power would like to write it off," he tells them after. "Oracle said I'd know when that time came."

 

Sherlock, upset at being outdone, promptly rushed in as soon as John finished relaying his Quest.

 

When he returned, he was in what Molly called one of his sulking moods, and refused to so much as breathe a word about his Quest.

 

The trip down the tunnel feels much longer than it really is, but eventually she comes to the opening at the other end, and steps through the fog.

 

A tall man looms over her in the stark, wide room. For some reason, he carries an umbrella.

 

"Molly Hooper," he says, in a stern, serious voice much quieter than Molly expected (she had thought it would boom and echo, bouncing off the walls of the cave). "Your Quest, should you accept it, is this:"

 

"There will be a time when a dastardly villain will rise from nothing, and his actions, if allowed to continue, will throw the world into disarray. You shall be the one to take him out," the Oracle says. "His name: Jim Moriarty."

 

Unfortunately, the fog makes Molly just a bit sleepy, the voice is a bit droney, and she was too busy thinking about acoustics to really pick up on much of the first bit of her Quest.

 

At that second half, though, she perks up.

 

"Take him out. Like on a date?" she asks, awed.

 

The Oracle frowns, mistaking her very real request for clarification for the flippancy of youth. A joke.

 

He says nothing, and Molly misinterprets the silence as a sulky affirmative, a 'yes, of course, what else would it be?' because that was how Sherlock would respond to things, sometimes.

 

Then they part ways, with the misunderstanding fully intact.

 

When Molly emerges from the cave there is a spring in her step. She doesn't wait for her friends to ask what she got.

 

"I've got a soulmate!" she readily shares. And her mission was to make her soulmate happy, wasn't that wonderful?

 

Sherlock eyes her skeptically and John shrugs and Molly rolls her eyes because _boys_.

 

Except her soulmate. Her soulmate wasn't going to be like that, he was going to be wonderful.

 

-

 

A week later, because Molly is a child, she has all but forgotten the original words of the Oracle, foggy as they were to begin with.

 

All that remains is the idea that she's got a soulmate out there somewhere, and she is going to make him happy. He would make _her_ happy. They were going to be great.

 

-

 

During their second year, there is a new boy starting at the Academy named “Jim,” but Molly sneaks a look at the roster, and is sad to discover that it’s not _her_ Jim.

 

He’s a bit awkward, like her, and he’s quite sweet, like her. But Sherlock thinks he’s a weirdo (‘too happy, no one sane could smile that much’), and doesn’t want Molly to invite him to sit with them at lunch. John says he’s ‘going to stay out of these politics and you beans can figure it out yourselves’—so they don’t end up sitting with Jim at lunch after all.

 

But Molly waves to him in the halls and he waves back, and she thinks of them as almost sort of friends.

 

-

 

Their third year rolls around and Jim asks Molly to the school dance.

 

They scarcely say two words to each other on any given day, but Sherlock has already staunchly refused to attend the dance and John has got a date so Molly doesn’t want to be a third wheel and she really did want to go—so she says yes.

 

(They end up hanging out at arms length next to each other by the punch bowl for a long time before Molly asks him finally if they should dance, whereupon they awkwardly sway to the music with their hands on each other’s upper arms. It’s all very stiff, but entertaining enough for these two nonetheless. There is a lot of giggling. They dance to every single song. Molly is not lying when she tells Sherlock, after, that she had a good time.)

 

-

 

During their fourth year, things get a little weird.

 

The nice, placid serenity cloaking the school is completely disrupted when news gets out that one of three Wish Stones has disappeared from the Headmistress’s office.

 

Stolen.

 

Sherlock jumps up from the assembly hall seat with a whoop and John and Molly have to pull him back down and shove him under a book bag very quickly to avoid scrutiny. They’re (almost completely) positive Sherlock did not steal it. He’s resolved to figure out who _did_ , however.

 

The missing Wish Stone presented problems two-fold. One, the sheer power of one of these Wishes being granted could be catastrophic, seeing as they were far from being no-strings-attached deals.

 

And, two, it meant the thief was one third of the way to obtaining the power to unleash the Endless Dark, an entity that had been locked away so long ago that the sorcerers today knew precious little about it, just that it would be Very Bad for the Entire World should it be set loose upon the Earth again.

 

After all, it had taken a whole three sorcerers to seal it into the mountain, and each had given up the extent of their magic in order to create the split-up keys, now known to all as the Wish Stones.

 

In retrospect, it was not the best of plans. All one had to do was place all three of the egg-shaped stones back into their respective grooves on the side of the mountain and, _bam!_ Endless Dark. It was the very definition of a Big Red Button, meaning, it was always bound to be horribly tempting. Huge design flaw.

 

In their defense, it was about 900 years ago and they were under a whole lot of pressure what with the Endless Dark looming over them and all.

 

Hence, the responsibility was then passed to each headmaster and headmistress of the Academy to guard and protect the stones with their lives.

 

And now,

 

Now one of them was gone.

 

So much for that backup.

 

-

 

Sherlock comes up with a plan to finagle his way into the headmistress’s office with the help of his trusty sidekicks John and Molly.

 

First, John will protest about being labeled a sidekick, and then agree to do his sidekickly duties anyway.

 

Second, Molly will pretend to faint just aways outside of the headmistress’s office, far away enough that it will take some seconds for them to get up and make their way over to help, but close enough that they will feel _obligated_ to help, and feel it close and secure enough that they’re not “leaving” the office and locking up.

 

Once Molly is in place, John will yell for help in a dramatically horrified way, and the Headmistress and Assistant will come running. Molly will have used a spell by then to make herself impossibly heavy and hard to move, giving Sherlock time to sneak into the Headmistress’s office to search for clues.

 

They agree on a time and procedure, and then right before dinner ends one day, the trio puts the plan into motion.

 

And then Jim nearly botches the whole thing.

 

“Molly!” he says, as he trips over himself, having nearly stepped on Molly, who is lying smack dab in the middle of the hallway, mentally preparing herself for her role.

 

Molly’s eyes fly open, and she stares at him in shock.

 

“Hello. Jim,” she responds awkwardly. She lifts one hand in a sort of wave. He’s on the floor as well, rubbing his head. He waves back and gives her a silly sort of smile.

 

He shifts a bit, bringing one knee up to his chest, and Molly thinks _oh no,_ that is the pose of someone who is settling in for a nice chat and he needs to _go away right now_ or Sherlock will be _so upset._

 

“What are you doing on the floor?” he asks, like that’s a normal question to ask.

 

Molly sighs. She is not a good liar. John was going to show up any minute now, and he is not a good liar either.

 

“I don’t feel so well,” she tries. “I was getting dizzy standing up, and I thought, maybe it won’t be so bad if I’m horizontal.”

 

She figures John will show up and then she will start to moan and groan as if it has gotten worse, and by then having three people pull at and fuss over her won’t be that different from it being four people, right? So that’s the plan she goes with. It’s a pretty good one, as far as improvisation goes, she thinks.

 

Jim nods understandingly, and opens his mouth to say something, but gets interrupted by the sound of John running up the stairs toward them.

 

“Molly!” he yells, necessarily loud. “Are you alright?!”

 

Cue the moaning and groaning. Molly clutches at her stomach and in the moment she turns her face away from John and Jim mutters a spell. She tosses and turns in place and curls into the fetal position and now weighs as much as 50 grown elephants.

 

“I think I’m _dying_ ,” she gasps. John yells some more, and Jim’s eyes go wide with fear for her. He’s asking things like ‘is it a stomachache?’ and ‘did you eat the fish they served today?’ but it’s mostly drowned out by John’s dramatics now.

 

Indeed, the Headmistress and Assistant come running, and they have a bafflingly hard time trying to move her, though her tossing around helps keep everyone from realizing it’s because she weighs 50 elephants.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Sherlock successfully sneak into the office while everyone’s eyes are on her. A wave of relief. Phew.

 

She groans and moans a bit more, then thinks, well, they’re all watching me, so I might as well give them a show.

 

“If...if I don’t make it— _ah!—_ please—please tell my parents I love them!” she cries, adding a little sniffle onto the end. Hey, Molly thinks, I’m actually not bad. “And please take care of Mabel—”

 

“Mabel? Who’s Mabel?” Jim asks amidst the cacophony.

 

“That’s her petunia plant,” John responds.

 

“Mabel needs lots of sunlight, and she likes it when you sing to her!” Molly sniffles, punctuating her saddness with a groan.

 

She’s about to launch into a bit about how although her life was short it was well lived, but Jim suddenly looks over his shoulder, noticing Sherlock leave the office.

 

“Sherlock!” he calls out.

 

 **_Shit_** **,** Molly, John, and Sherlock simultaneously think.

 

Sherlock freezes, right outside the door, trying to make it look like he was approaching from the hallway, and not leaving from the office.

 

“Come help! We’ve got to get Molly to the infirmary!” Jim says, voice colored with frantic worry.

 

Sherlock scampers over, and at the lack of suspicion coming from the adults, the two sidekicks mentally breathe a sigh of relief.

 

Sherlock stands over Molly as she tosses and turns and everyone fusses some more—until she finally catches his eye and sees him staring down at her. She stares back, awaiting her cue.

 

Oh, right.

 

Molly curled up once more, using the chance to unspell herself.

 

Then Sherlock extends his hand to help Molly up.

 

She takes it, pulling herself up. Sherlock catches her as she wobbles, and asks, “are you alright?”

 

“Yeah,” she says, a bit breathless from all the acting. “Probably just the fish.”

 

The adults sigh, exasperated with the dramatics of youth these days, and Jim blinks, completely out of the loop.

 

-

 

They huddle in Sherlock’s room after, because his family is rich so that means he gets a single room and some privacy, and he shares his findings.

 

“The thief was definitely a staff or faculty member, or a student even,” Sherlock says. “There were no signs of forced entry except one single scratch, which means they must have not only been familiar with the place but also had easy access to the office. Just look at how easily I got in, right?”

 

“I think we can rule out former student or staff simply because there would have been security breaches reported elsewhere in the building if that was the case,” Sherlock continues.

 

John and Molly nods, sitting patiently through his monologue, because this isn’t their first rodeo. Sometimes they bring popcorn.

 

“Now, it’s not like the eggs are just lying around once you get inside the office,” he says. “They’re kept in this special safe, which really looks more like a display case, because people 900 years ago weren’t considering security as much as they were things like _heroism_ and _trophies_ and so on. Because Vikings.”

 

They nod some more, even though Sherlock is being a bit biased.

 

“Anyway, there are tons of wards and spells on the case, which makes it really hard to open for anyone—except the headmaster or headmistress keyed to the safe,” Sherlock concludes. “As we all know, each time the position is handed over, they re-key the Wish Eggs—”

 

“Wish Stones,” Molly corrects, because it bugged her the first time and she didn’t say anything and so she’s going to say something _now_. Sherlock rolls his eyes.

 

‘Sure, yes. They re-key them to the new head, which—another security flaw, really—but it means that _potentially_ it could have been the headmistress who stole it in the first place,” Sherlock says.

 

They know better than to ask the obvious question, but Sherlock pauses anyway. Then frowns at them because they’re taking all the fun out of explaining things if they’re not going to be an active audience.

 

He clears his throat.

 

“But we all know that it _couldn’t_ have been Headmistress Potts, because firstly, they appoint ridiculously moral characters into these posts, and secondly, there was a scratch on the desk drawer that suggest someone recently entered her office, someone who has rarely or never been in the office,” Sherlock says.

 

“See, her desk is positioned from the bookshelf where the case is in a way where, in order to reach the display case, you kind of have to squeeze yourself into an odd spot. The headmistress knows this, and so always first pushes her chair completely to the side, a utterly nonsensical move in any situation other than to obtain the case—the grooves on the rug beneath the desk suggest as much,” Sherlock says.

 

“So the scratch could only have been left by someone who _wasn’t_ the Headmistress or her Assistant, someone slightly shorter than the Headmistress, most likely, but who had somehow gotten their hands on her wand,” Sherlock says.

 

Molly and John look at each other.

 

“How do we catch the culprit?” John asks.

 

Sherlock furrows his brows.

 

“We must retrace the Headmistress’s steps, we must find out who must have taken her wand that day,” he says.

 

-

 

The next morning, the Headmistress announces that last night, right around the time dinner ended, a second theft occurred, and now two Wish Stones are missing.

 

Sherlock jumps up with a sound that’s half frustration, half exultation, and John and Molly have to shove him under the table as quickly as possible.

 

“ _Two_ ,” he whispers at them.

 

“Yes, we can count,” John responds under his breath.

 

“Now we have _motive!”_ Sherlock says excitedly.

 

“Really?” Molly asks. She is actually curious. “How do you know?”

 

“If they were desperate for a wish, they would’ve used it. They would have used the first one. Oh no, this is a trophy, just like it was for the Vikings,” Sherlock rambles.

 

“We’re not descended from Vikings, Sherlock,” John mumbles.

 

“The thief is stealing it to show he can. That’s why he went back for a second one,” Sherlock says, “because the first one was _easy._ He was _bored._ ”

 

Molly squints as she considers the theory. Given how well their clumsy plan had worked, yeah, she could see how it might have actually been incredibly easy to steal the egg. Stone. The Stone.

 

“And now, now he’s going to go for a third,” Sherlock says.

 

“We’ve got to stop him, then,” John says.

 

“No, no, let him take it, it doesn’t matter,” Sherlock says in a rush.

 

John squints down at him.

 

“It _doesn’t matter_ that this thief will have the means to unleash the Endless Dark?” he asks skeptically.

 

“Exactly!” Sherlock says. “The goal is to unleash the Endless Dark, for whatever reason! So, we let the thief steal the third egg, because then he will inevitably come to the mountain to try to unlock the seal and unleash the Endless Dark. And that is where we will intercept him and catch him!”

 

Both Molly and John are impressed. That actually does make a lot of sense.

 

“That’s brilliant, Sherlock. Are we going to tell the Headmistress?” she asks.

 

Sherlock scowls. It would be the reasonable thing to do, to tell the authorities and have them covertly secure the area on the side of the mountain. Maybe even with some firepower and actual security measures. It would make a ton more sense than it would to stake it out themselves, as a trio of adolescents.

 

-

 

Except, the third egg goes completely untouched.

 

-

 

Sherlock visits the case again and again, but there are no further clues forthcoming.

 

It is not until their fifth year that the thief moves again.

 

Molly has been looking forward to the first day of school for some time now, having felt a bit stir-crazy at home near the end of the holiday.

 

Molly greets Sherlock and John with hugs, tells them how much she missed them over the summer, and wow, Sherlock, you’ve gotten really tall!, and John, you, are kind of exactly how we left you!

 

And then one week after that, the third egg goes missing.

 

So, one week after school starts, Sherlock and John are shivering in the bushes.

 

“What happened to going to the authorities, Sherlock?” John asks, knowing it will be a lost cause.

 

Sherlock snorts.

 

“Authorities. What have the authorities ever done for _you,_ John?”

 

“Um. Is that a rhetorical question?

 

Molly sighs, because after her Mathemagics Club meeting, she will be off to shiver in the bushes too.

 

She drags her feet as she makes her way up the dirt path to the mountain, which is, not coincidentally, the opposite side of the mountain where the Oracle Cave sits, because you can’t blame a girl for not wanting to stake out in the woods in a plan that could 30% result in death or maiming. They were not great odds, honestly. They weren’t _absolutely sure_ it was going to be a three-against-one deal.

 

But because she’s taken her merry time in getting up the mountain road, when she finally gets there, she sees that Sherlock and John are already in a tussle.

 

It’s two against one and it’s not so much a duel as it is a sort of brawl with a lot of hair pulling and grappling and kicking and once in a while someone gets lucky enough to get in a magical hit and not even a great one at that, but they’ve maneuvered their way precariously close to the cliff edge, and things are getting very dangerous.

 

“Sherlock!! John!!” Molly yells, dropping her bag and kicking up into a run. She’s got her wand in hand and shoots of a series of rapid-fire warning shocks, half of which hit _someone_ at least, and it seems to put the three students at pause and at arms length enough to stop their path to the cliff’s edge.

 

Molly is still several feet away, and she can see that the three of them are in a Mexican Standoff. Sort of. Both John and Sherlock have their wands pointed at—is that _Jim_?—so maybe it’s not actually a Mexican Standoff, but Molly doesn’t know and doesn’t care what a Mexican Standoff is.

 

“You took the second egg that night when Molly faked a stomachache, didn’t you?” Sherlock says, realization dawning. Jim looks very smug at that.

 

“We’re already caught you,” John says. “Now drop your wand and surrender.”

 

Jim just laughs like he’s in a comedy club and has had so many beers that all of the standups are equally and increasingly funny.

 

“Why were you doing this anyway?” John yells, exasperated. “What _good_ could possibly come from unleashing something named the _Endless Dark_ ? It’s not going to end well for _any_ of us.”

 

“Because it’s all so _dull_ and _boring,_ with our _boring classes_ and these _boring full fledged sorcerers_ and no one’s got an _interesting_ Quest in the last 500 years!! They’re all ‘numbers will be your salvation’—which _really_ just means ‘you’ll be a great accountant!!’ or ‘you’re destined to conquer the waters,’ which _reaaally_ just means you’ll save some dumb child who can’t swim one summer by the pool _,_ ” Jim says, like it’s obvious. “Where's the 'Save the world' quest? Or 'burn it down'? And then you have these three bloody big eggs sitting _right there_ and you’ve got some Big Bad named the _Endless Dark—_ it’s just _asking_ to opened!!”

 

Sherlock blinks, glances over at John.

 

“Psst. Why didn’t _we_ think of that?” he asks.

 

“Because that would be _bad,_ Sherlock,” John replies in the resigned tone of someone who has had to explain such things more than once.

 

“Right,” Sherlock nods, trying to internalize this bit of information.

 

Molly's got a good shot right now. She's coming up behind Jim, and there's no way he can get all three, and she can get him before he tries to maneuver one of the other two into a hostage situation.

 

"Yes, and then everyone will remember Jim Moriarty as the one who broke the endless _dull_ ," he says, rolling his eyes.

 

Molly freezes in her tracks.

 

"That's not your name," she says, loud enough that her voice carries over to the group.

 

Jim looks over his shoulder.

 

“What?”

 

“That’s _not. Your. Name_ ,” Molly repeats, stamping her foot.

 

“Yes it _is_ ,” he shoots back, like she’s an idiot or something, but he can’t fool her.

 

“It’s _not!_ ” she returns, frustrated and a bit offended. “I’ve seen the attendance records and the report cards!”

 

Jim rolls his eyes at that.

 

“Okay, maybe it’s not still my _legal_ name, and you can blame my mother for that, getting remarried and all,” he explains with total disdain. Like it’s whatever.

 

But it’s _not_ whatever, not to Molly, because she has wait her _whole life_ (she has waited _five_ years, let’s be honest) for this.

 

So she gasps, audibly, because she’s _sooo_ not dressed for this! She looks around frantically as she brushes her hair back, and then grabs a handful of wildflowers

 

She sprints the last several feet and then skids to a stop before the group. They all give her very funny looks, especially as she shoves the flowers under Jim’s nose.

 

“Jim Moriarty,” she says very seriously, and he eyes her with some trepidation.

 

“Will you go out with me?”

 

Utter silence.

 

Molly sweats. Soulmates were meant to be together! She wasn’t meant to have to face the possibility of rejection!!

 

Jim looks between her and the flowers for a good twenty seconds.

 

“Are you serious?” he finally asks.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Molly insists. “The Oracle even told me so. We’re meant be soulmates. I’m going to take you out, on the best date ever.”

 

He looks baffled.

 

“I’m not sure that’s what—”

 

Then Jim catches himself. Stops. Considers it a bit.

 

“Okay,” he says. Molly’s face brightens immediately.

 

“Yes?” she asks.

 

He nods, taking the flowers. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll go out with you.”

 

Molly whoops and punches her fist in the air. Jim smiles into the flowers like he knows something she doesn’t know, but is happy to see how this all plays out.

 

“John,” Sherlock hisses. “John, what is happening?”

 

John rolls his eyes.

 

“This is what normal teenagers do, Sherlock,” he says in that well-used, resigned tone of voice.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [save the world, get the girl, blah blah blah](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14280741) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




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